A TASTE FOR IT: A FAMILY WITH A POWERFUL THIRST

On my mother's side I come from a family of drinkers: boozers, dipsomaniacs, drunks, lushes, sots, alcoholics of various stripes and even a few pill poppers. My aunts and uncles were all short people and that probably compounded things. But the real problem was alcohol.


Lives were wrecked, people died - a besotted favorite aunt and a couple of innocent and sober strangers died in alcohol-bathed wrecks. One uncle went without a driver's license for

much of his life and booze was involved. Another uncle loved to get drunk, get insulted (he made sure that would happen), start fights in bars and end up in jail from time to time. His violent streak sometimes extended to family members, but they all insisted they still loved him because that is what people in that kind of family do. And they were that kind of family.

Some were loud and angry drunks. Others drank prodigiously and passed out quietly. Some married drunks. And one or two were private drinkers. My mother was one of those and probably angrier than the rest. She didn't begin drinking until I was grown and gone, but she drank her way through anger toward sleep for years. None seemed like happy drunks, but they all drunkenly, enthusiastically, splashed around in the shallow puddles of their own misery. Marriages suffered. Children suffered the way the children of drunkards always do and most of us have lugged it into adulthood in one way or another, never quite escaping no matter how far away we went or close to home we stayed. 


My mother loved wallowing in the family mess with her brothers and sisters. And there always was plenty of it. Their mother encouraged it and made sure they always had something to wallow in. After she died most of them didn't know any other way to live and kept on wallowing. They were a family rich in secrets, lies and liquor. A few slipped away eventually, but not many.

I do not like the wallow of family mess and stay far away from it. And after growing up around those people, I have a complicated relationship with the whole idea of family, particularly extended family, and it took many years of my life to escape my own secrets and lies (I thought that was the way life was supposed to be lived. Why wouldn't I?) and enjoy family life.

I have always been wary of family but I have never been wary of alcohol. In spite of everything, I do not have a complicated relationship with alcohol. I like to drink. I've spent my entire adult life proving how much I like it.

Beer is where I started when I was old enough to drink legally (18 years old in those days). There were only beer bars where I grew up and I was a regular at several. I don't remember drinking much whiskey back then, but I must have

because I remember puking so much bourbon and Coke out of car windows that I didn't drink bourbon - or Coca Cola - for years. I couldn't even stand the smell. Beer was my drink of choice. I even carried an opener - a church key - on my key ring until poptops came along. After training on Pabst Blue Ribbon for a few years (a good training beer if ever there was one) I moved on to tastier, sturdier fare. Budweiser. Tall cans. Imported beer. Dark beer. Guinness stout. The stronger tasting the better. If I drank whiskey it was scotch, but that was rare.

I like to drink but I do not like to be drunk. It happens but not very often. And I have a very low tolerance for drunks and staggering drunken behavior. Both of those things are no doubt linked to the people I grew up around. But the way I see it, I drink the way I do in spite of them, not because of them. I have a taste for it, but I do not have a thirst for it. I do not crave alcohol or develop a mighty thirst if I quit drinking for a while - and I have quit at times. I do not get drunk and go looking for a fight; I do not get drunk and descend on some unsuspecting friend or relative like the raging, weeping drunks who showed up at my parents' house in the middle of the night too frequently when I was growing up - usually after the bars closed or the bottle was empty; I do not get drunk, pass out on the floor and have to be dragged to my bed by friends or relatives. I do not get drunk and behave badly. I do not drink alone or early or instead of doing other things. Drinking and driving used to be a way of life (we all did it), but I don't even do that any more.

And nowadays I particularly like to drink bourbon. I guess the beer years washed the pukey bourbon memories away. A few years ago I bought a bottle and enjoyed it. I like the taste.  Bourbon, a little ice, a little water. Several of those each evening. Along with a little conversation with my wife. Drinking has been part of the rich conversation we have kept going for approaching 30 years and I have to admit I even offered her a little bourbon the first time she came to my house (not a social visit, but I was wishing it was), which she rejected with the promise that she would come back and we would have that drink later and she did and we did and still do. Add a little music, some TV, a book, a movie, a sunset, a fire in the fireplace, a starry sky. Add whatever you like, but don't add anything to the whiskey but a little water and a little ice.

I drink but I am not an alcoholic. I am confident of that fact. It allows me to go on drinking. And every drink I take proves I am not like them. I do not do any of the things I watched my mother and her brothers and sisters do. If I did, I would quit drinking tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. But the truth is I have no plans to quit at all. Happy hour starts at five o'clock around here.